Miss Marjoribanks. Oliphant Margaret

of the leading people in Carlingford, that he was the most likely man to represent the borough when old Mr Chiltern, who was always threatening to retire, fulfilled his promise. Mr Cavendish had a very handsome house a little out of town, where a lady would be next thing to a county lady – indeed, quite a county lady, if her husband was the Member for Carlingford.

      All these thoughts passed through Mrs Chiley's mind, and, as was natural, in the precious moments after dinner, were suggested in occasional words of meaning to the understanding ear of Miss Marjoribanks. "My dear Lucilla, it is just the position that would suit you – with your talents!" the old lady said; and Lucilla did not say No. To be sure, she had not at the present moment the least inclination to get married, as she truly said; it would, indeed, to tell the truth, disturb her plans considerably; but still, if such was the intention of Providence, and if it was to the Member for Carlingford, Lucilla felt that it was still credible that everything might be for the best.

      "But it is a great deal too soon to think of anything of that sort," Miss Marjoribanks would reply. "If I had thought of that, I need never have come home at all; and especially when papa has been so good about everything." Yet for all that she was not ungracious to Mr Cavendish when he came in first as usual. To marry a man in his position would not, after all, be deranging her plans to any serious extent. Indeed, it would, if his hopes were realised, constitute Lucilla a kind of queen in Carlingford, and she could not but feel that, under these circumstances, it might be a kind of duty to reconsider her resolution. And thus the time passed while the drawing-room was undergoing renovation. Mr Cavendish had been much tantalised, she said, by the absence of the piano, which prevented them from having any music, and Lucilla had even been tempted into a few snatches of song, which, to tell the truth, some of the gentlemen present, especially the Doctor himself and Colonel Chiley, being old-fashioned, preferred without the accompaniment. And thus it was, under the most brilliant auspices, and with the full confidence of all her future constituency, that Miss Marjoribanks superintended the arrangement of the drawing-room on that momentous Thursday, which was to be the real beginning of her great work in Carlingford.

      "My dear, you must leave yourself entirely in my hands," Lucilla said to Barbara Lake on the morning of that eventful day. "Don't get impatient. I dare say you don't know many people, and it may be a little slow for you at first; but everybody has to put up with that, you know, for a beginning. And, by the bye, what are you going to wear?"

      "I have not thought about it," said Barbara, who had the painful pride of poverty, aggravated much by a sense that the comforts of other people were an injury to her. Poor soul! she had been thinking of little else for at least a week past; and then she had not very much choice in her wardrobe; but her disposition was one which rejected sympathy, and she thought it would look best to pretend to be indifferent. At the same time, she said this with a dull colour on her cheeks, the colour of irritation; and she could not help asking herself why Lucilla, who was not so handsome as she was, had the power to array herself in gorgeous apparel, while she, Barbara, had nothing but a white frock. There are differences even in white frocks, though the masculine mind may be unaware of them. Barbara's muslin had been washed six times, and had a very different air from the vestal robes of her patroness. To be sure, Lucilla was not taken in, in the least, by her companion's look of indifference, and would even have been delighted to bestow a pretty dress upon Barbara, if that had been a possible thing to do.

      "There will be no dress," said Miss Marjoribanks, with solemnity. "I have insisted upon that. You know it is not a party, it is only an Evening. A white frock, high– that is all I mean to wear; and mind you don't lose patience. I shall keep my eye on you; and after the first, I feel sure you will enjoy yourself. Good-bye for the present." When she had uttered these encouraging words. Miss Marjoribanks went away to pursue her preparations, and Barbara proceeded to get out her dress and examine it. It was as important to her as all the complicated paraphernalia of the evening's arrangements were to Lucilla. It is true that there were greater interests involved in the case of the leader; but then Barbara was the soldier of fortune who had to open the oyster with her sword, and she was feeling the point of it metaphorically while she pulled out the breadths of her white dress, and tried to think that they would not look limp at night; and what her sentiments lost in breadth, as compared with Lucilla's, they gained in intensity, for – for anything she could tell – her life might change colour by means of this Thursday Evening; and such, indeed, was her hope. Barbara prepared for her first appearance in Grange Lane, with a mind wound up to any degree of daring. It did not occur to her that she required to keep faith with Miss Marjoribanks in anything except the duet. As regarded other matters, Barbara was quite unscrupulous, for at the bottom she could not but feel that any one who was kind to her was taking an unwarrantable liberty. What right had Lucilla Marjoribanks to be kind to her? as if she was not as good as Lucilla any day! and though it might be worth her while to take advantage of it for the moment, it was still an insult, in its way, to be avenged if an opportunity ever should arise.

      The evening came, as evenings do come, quite indifferently whether people are glad or sorry; and it was with a calmness which the other ladies regarded as next to miraculous, that Miss Marjoribanks took Colonel Chiley's arm to go to the dining-room. We say the other ladies, for on this great occasion Mrs Centum and Mrs Woodburn were both among the dinner-guests. "To see her eat her dinner as if she had nothing on her mind!" Mrs Centum said in amazement: "as for me, though nobody can blame me if anything goes wrong, I could enjoy nothing for thinking of it. And I must say I was disappointed with the dinner," she added, with a certain air of satisfaction, in Mrs Woodburn's ear. It was when they were going upstairs, and Lucilla was behind with Mrs Chiley. "The fuss the men have always made about these dinners! and except for a few made dishes that were really nothing, you know, I can't say I saw anything particular in it. And as for Lucilla, I can't think she has any feeling," said the banker's wife.

      "Oh, my dear, it is because you don't understand," said Mrs Woodburn. "She is kept up, you know, by a sense of duty. It is all because she has set her heart on being a comfort to her dear papa!"

      Such, it is true, were the comments that were made upon the public-spirited young woman who was doing so much for Carlingford; but then Lucilla only shared the fate of all the great benefactors of the world. An hour later the glories of the furniture were veiled and hidden by the robes of a radiant flood of society, embracing all that was most fair and all that was most distinguished in Carlingford. No doubt there was a world of heterogeneous elements; but then if there had not been difficulties where would have been the use of Miss Marjoribanks's genius? Mr Bury and his sister, who had been unconsciously mollified by the admirable dinner provided for them downstairs, found some stray lambs in the assembly who were in need of them, and thus had the double satisfaction of combining pleasure with duty; and though there were several people in the room whose lives were a burden to them in consequence of Mrs Woodburn's remarkable gift, even they found it impossible not to be amused by an occasional representation of an absent individual, or by the dashing sketch of Lucilla, which she gave at intervals in her corner, amid the smothered laughter of the audience, who were half ashamed of themselves. "She is never ill-tempered, you know," the persons who felt themselves threatened in their turn said to each other with a certain piteous resignation; and oddly enough it was in general the most insignificant people about who were afraid of Mrs Woodburn. It is needless to say that such a dread never entered the serene intelligence of Miss Marjoribanks, who believed in herself with a reasonable and steady faith. As for old Mrs Chiley, who had so many funny little ways, and whom the mimic executed to perfection, she also was quite calm on the subject. "You know there is nothing to take off in me," the old lady would say; "I always was a simple body: and then I am old enough to be all your grandmothers, my dear;" which was a saying calculated, as Miss Marjoribanks justly observed, to melt a heart of stone.

      Then the Miss Browns had brought their photographs, in which most people in Grange Lane were caricatured hideously, but with such a charming equality that the most exigeant forgave the wrong to himself in laughing at his neighbours. Miss Brown had brought her music too, and sang her feeble little strain to the applause of her immediate neighbours, and to the delight of those who were at a distance, and who could talk louder and flirt more openly under cover of the music; and there were other young ladies who had also come prepared with a little roll of songs or "pieces." Lucilla, with her finger as it were upon the pulse of the company, let them all exhibit their powers